


her own finite time

by gnimmish



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 06:22:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10938801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimmish/pseuds/gnimmish
Summary: God damnit the world is a so dark lately, if she can pry some small spark of joy out of it in half an hour with her amnesiac fiancé doing something a little unwise on her apartment floor, then she's not turning down the opportunity.An extension of the scene in 3x21 when amnesiac!Barry rediscovers his powers, because he and Iris totally had sex right after that, guys.





	her own finite time

 

 

“You kissed me and gave me super powers,” Barry is sitting on the floor looking at Iris like she just sprouted wings.  
  
“No, that's – no,” Iris gently grasps his shoulders, “you got your speed from a particle accelerator explosion. I... just set it off.”  
  
Barry looks unconvinced. “What's a particle accelerator?”

 

She has literally no idea how to explain that to him. “We should get you back to Star Labs – Cisco can take you through all this stuff, I'll call him now – ”

 

She's working on getting to her feet and remembering where she put her phone before he kissed her, when Barry is tugging at her wrist. “Do – do you have to?”  
  
“Have to?”

 

“Call Cisco? I mean, right now – ?” his ears are colouring, his expression sheepish, “I just... I was kinda enjoying – ”  
  


He's so precious she could just – well, no, not die, wrong turn of phrase, but – “Bear, I kinda think you need to be in a controlled environment till we can help you figure this out.”  
  
His brow crinkles a little, disappointed, his hand still on her wrist – and she sinks onto her knees beside him again because she can't resist, not right now, not when he's like this. “You have the rest of your life to be alone with me, babe.”

  
Also, she's intensely glad that he's forgotten how she looks when she's lying through her teeth.

 

But his smile is so warm and so immediate that she can't feel bad about it – it's been months since he smiled at her like that, without any hint of desperate, gnawing fear behind his eyes.

 

“That's a nice thought.”

 

“Yeah?” She touches his jaw, steady and soft.

 

“God yeah,” he leans into her touch and she can feel the electricity humming under his skin, she's sure. Barry Allen may be largely in the dark right now but The Flash knows exactly who she is.

 

And even while she's watching the blood creep up his neck and into his cheeks, he's squirming a little closer, clumsily, like he's never touched her before, like the night of their third date when they'd both known they were absolutely going to have sex but neither of them had quite said it yet. Barry had kept just carefully inching closer to her like he was asking permission for something.

 

She had hardly known what to do with him back then – months that now feel like years ago – except to tell him _yes_ , to pull him closer, to shift and tumble against him whatever way felt good until they had grasped what was physical, chemical, between them. To figure out how they worked in this new, strange, perfect way.

 

These days, of course, she has very clear ideas about what to do with him.

 

“Bear,” she murmurs, and his gaze comes up with lightening in it, his body shakes half an inch to the left, and his mouth drops open in surprise, reaching for her hand.

 

“That is,” he swallows, “you, it's definitely you – ”

 

And then he's kissing her and she doesn't have it in her to tell him to stop.

 

God damnit the world is a so dark lately, if she can pry some small spark of joy out of it in half an hour with her amnesiac fiancé doing something a little unwise on her apartment floor, then she's not turning down the opportunity.

 

She kicks the debris of his fall out of the way and pulls him down on top her, one hand fisted in the front of his shirt. Barry lets out a huff of surprise but comes with her, his body familiar and safe pressing down against hers. His forearms hit the floor either side of her head and one of his knees finds its way between her thighs, and she's half on and off the rug she's been so paranoid about staining since finding out how much Barry spent on it –

 

But she bites at his lower lip and the noise he makes is the best sound she's heard him make since he proposed. 

 

She reaches the hand that isn't holding onto his collar up, round the back of his neck, rakes her fingers through his hair. His body hasn't forgotten her, hasn't forgotten this at all – he reacts exactly how she's used to, with this weird ticking purr that is apparently what happens when his breathing gets so rapid that his vocal chords start vibrating.

 

She nuzzles at his neck and he yelps – like, actually, out loud.

 

“S'like you have a cheat sheet,” he gasps, his gaze starry, smile wondering as he stares down at her, “That's not fair.”

 

Iris is still stroking her hands through his hair – and he's still purring. “You don't seem that upset.”

 

“I'm – I'm really not.”  
  


“Yeah, I didn't think so.”  
  


She sits up enough to slide his jacket off his shoulders, reaching for his shirt buttons – and the shirt is off before she's even got to the top one, buttons flying everywhere – Barry looks momentarily sheepish.

  
“Um – oops?”

 

“Yeah, you've done that before,” Iris presses a kiss against his long, pale neck, feeling his pulse skittering there, “don't worry about it. You have lots of shirts.”

 

“O-okay,” his hands are wondering down to the hem of her top, the waist band of her skirt, and she wonders if he'll have instinctively retained an understanding of how to unhook her bra or if she's going to have to handle that for him like she did their first few times together – his hands had been shaking too much back then to do it himself.

 

“Is this,” his fingers have found the little zip in her skirt, hesitating there, “alright? Um – I – ”

 

“Yes,” she takes his other hand and presses it to one of her breasts, “yes, Bear, it's alright.”

 

His eyes widen, and then his gaze drops, tongue darting out to wet his lips – and she thinks maybe she's pushed him too fast, when he leans closer and opens his mouth against her throat, kisses the skin soft as snow melting, draws his teeth along the sensitive flesh there as his hand slides down under her skirt.

 

He's never done that before – he's just mimicking what she did to him a moment ago – but god, yes, wow, it's working for her – and she arches into his touch, and then she has to get out of her clothes, now, please.

 

The top joins his shirt across the room, thankfully rather less damaged, and then she's struggling out of her skirt, ungainly and uncaring, and Barry is a gasping, desperate mess but he's so cute when he's turned on out of his mind she doesn't care, all but rips his pants off him, leaving him in his socks and boxers.

 

“You're really – really – really,” Barry shuffles closer again across the floor, his voice hushed, “you're really – so beautiful.”

 

His hand travels down the bare flesh of her back and she feels herself shiver involuntarily – it's a little cold in the loft in just her underwear, though that's not really what's making her tremble. She tips her head back to kiss him, and he presses his forehead to hers like he did the first time they kissed, like if he stayed close enough for long enough he'd never have to leave her again.

 

“You okay?” She asks, breathing him in, the stillness and softness in his eyes, all that bare skin under her hands, the flush in his face fanning across his chest – she's always liked that about him, the way he blushes.

 

“You have to ask?” He swallows, smiles, quick and fierce.

 

“Yeah, actually,” she taps his chin, “consent culture, _Bart._ ”

 

He snorts. “Yeah, no, that doesn't sound right anymore.”

 

“No?”

 

“I guess... I like the way you make _Barry_ sound.”  
  


“Aw,” but she's only half teasing, because of course it takes her to name him, it takes her saying it for him to be comfortable, it takes her to give him his identity, his safety, his home.

 

(And if she's not there to grant him that? She won't think about it. Not here. Not now).

 

“Please tell me you remember how to do this,” she says, minutes later, underwear discarded now, fumbling for the condoms she keeps in the drawer under their coffee table for those times when they don't make it to the bed.

 

“This?” Barry looks amazing, naked and half hard and blushing and grinning and all but sparkling with how much he wants her, how happy she makes him. “Y-yeah, this, this I can – I will definitely figure it out.”  
  


“I'll help,” she promises, tears open the condom foil with her teeth.

 

“Okay,” that comes out with a little _umf_ at the end as she reaches for him, squeezes his length just enough to bring him instantly to full attention, his pupils abruptly blown huge as he begins to laugh, a hitching, breathless warmth in the sound. “Okay, okay, wow, god.”

 

She kisses him and he kisses her back, their noses bump and their teeth c-clack together and she doesn't care, his body vibrates on and off and on and off, he pulls her into his lap and then lays her back down on the floor – and the couch would be better but interrupting this now barely even crosses her mind.

 

He can't get the condom on, of course.

 

“Oh my god, Barry!”

 

He breaks three in a row before she does it for him.

 

“I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I could,” he shakes his head, “if I weren't – if my hands would hold still, I just – I promise it's not because I don't know how.”  
  


“Babe, it's fine,” At least the first month or so she'd had to deal with anything finicky during sex – bra clasps and condoms and buttons and zippers – or risk Barry vibrating stuff to pieces or falling through the bed in his excitement (and once through the bed and then the floor – thankfully their downstairs neighbours had been out and hadn't had to be surprised by a naked speedster dropping through their ceiling).

 

She gets one on him, quick and practised, and he groans at her touch and sounds so good and needy and hot that she can't even find the delay funny anymore.

 

“You're amazing,” he manages, as they both collapse back onto the rug, burying his face in her neck, scrambling to arrange their legs until they have a position that's actually going to work –

 

“Says the man with superpowers.”

 

“Says the woman who gave them to me.”

 

“I told you,” she fumbles between them, finds his cock and gets a gratifying sound deep in his chest for her trouble, “I just set them off.”

 

“Nah,” he sighs, and then the tip of him is pressed against where she's slick and open and oh – oh – this feeling is the best feeling she's had in days, “no, pretty sure it's all you.”

 

She hiccups a laugh and then all the breath goes out of her because no – she was wrong – _this_ is the best feeling she's had in days. Him inside her, pressing in, too enthusiastic to hesitate, filling her immediately with this incredible, incandescent pressure that could just – jesus – sometimes sex with Barry is just so damn good she has no idea how she survived so long without it –

 

“Steady,” she advises, around a stutter in her chest, “you gotta – babe – you gotta breathe.”

 

He nods, gasps, shakes, “H-how do you – do I – normally – ”

 

“Just like this,” she tells him, and she's only lying a little, “just like this, deep breath, and stay with me, look at me – ”

 

He looks, his gaze awed, hair sticking to his forehead. She wraps her legs around his hips to hold him in place and rocks up against him to set the rhythm, trying to follow her own advice – _steady, steady, breathe_ –

 

It's so hard not to be greedy with him, with her own finite time to experience him. But he's perfect. They are perfect. Ungainly on the floor, staining the expensive rug and making some truly undignified sounds but _perfect, perfect._

 

When they're done, he collapses on her chest, his breath shuddering, his skin tacky with sweat under her fingertips as she draws long, listless spirals over his shoulderblades, so full of tenderness that she aches.

 

“I love you,” she sighs, content, and feels his smile without having to look.

 

“I love you too,” he nuzzles up against her jaw. “I don't know much about me right now, but I know that.”

 

“Barry,” she tips his chin up with a finger, kisses where his mouth is red and swollen, “ _my_ Barry.” And damn it's corny but she likes the look it puts in his eyes.

 

“Yeah,” he agrees, contentedly, “totally yours.”

 

The silence is pleasant and warm and somewhere in the hazy distance beyond it Iris is aware that they're going to have to get up and go to Star Labs soon, face reality soon, put all of Barry's trauma back in his head soon. She pushes that future away – just a little longer.

 

“You okay?” She asks, into the quiet, listening to Barry's slow breath, feeling the slack in his shoulders. He has found one of her hands with his, and is idly playing with her engagement ring.

 

“I'm way more than okay,” he swallows, smiles, glances up from under his eyelashes. “I just... I don't know what I did to deserve you. I mean – that must sound – sorry – ”

 

“You gave me dinosaur stickers,” she tells him, and he blinks.

 

“What?”

 

“When we met. In kindergarten,” she begins to smooth his hair, the way she knows he likes when he's sleepy. “On my first day, I was sad because I'd never really been away from my dad before and I wanted to go home, you know? I didn't know why I had to stay there with all these people I didn't know. And then this little boy with this huge smile comes running up to me and gives me his dinosaur stickers. Because I was sad.”

 

“Dinosaur stickers, huh?”

 

“Yup.”

 

“Boy I really have a way with the ladies.”

 

She giggles. “It was a pretty smooth move for a five year old.”

 

And he kisses her again, his grip on her trembling just a little.

 

“I think,” he manages, breathless and warm against her mouth, “I might just be really, truly lucky.”

 

And maybe he wouldn't think that if he understood what had become of his parents or what his speed powers meant or what he had seen coming for her, for both of them, soon – but. But. Right now, Barry is smiling and happy and laying with her on their stupidly expensive rug, trailing lazy kisses down her chest, humming his approval of every inch of her skin, and she feels kinda lucky too. Just for a moment there doesn't have to be anything but this, them, him.

 

 

 


End file.
